


Noise and Silence

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M, and a lot of words, insecure boys being insecure, rambly ramble rambles, really just me looking at how Brick R never shuts up, there is a kiss though so thats good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 17:12:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16100111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: Just a little longer-than-a-drabble thing looking at how Enjolras and Grantaire are opposites in so many ways, and yet, so in orbit around each other. It's pretty feelings heavy, light on plot. Inspired by me thinking a lot about Grantaire's loooooong rants in the Brick.





	Noise and Silence

**_“Thou talk'st of nothing.“  
_ _"True, I talk of dreams…”_ (Romeo and Juliet)**

 

It’s the quiet hours that are the hardest.

Not that the other hours don’t present their own challenges. But the moments when Grantaire’s alone, before he drifts off to sleep, or when he’s staring at a blank canvas with no ideas of how to fill it, those hurt. The silence offers no distraction from thoughts he’d rather not have.

When he’s around the others, he can talk, sing, shout, dance, anything to keep the thoughts away. Paint can be splashed onto a canvas sometimes, just to rid it of its blankness, and just like that, can an empty room be filled with a rambling lecture. Combeferre once teased him, saying he spoke a great deal about nothing at all.

What the young scholar didn’t know was how nothing at all was so much better than the feeling of everything pressing down on him.

As long as the others around him were amused, and the wine was flowing, Grantaire doesn’t have to feel the emptiness deep inside. It was a shard of broken glass beneath his rib cage, and it pulsed in time with his heart, whispering “ _Alone. Alone. Alone_.”

He doesn’t want to be alone.

He’d always been alone.

Even when surrounded by others, he knows he’s alone, knows whatever he says is idle chatter, because he mattered to no one.

If he keeps the noise going, kept the party alive, then he wouldn’t have to think about the one person he wanted more than any party, more than any liquor. The one person who chose to neither party, nor drink.

The one person who could make him feel less alone, deep in his heart. Because there was something in Enjolras’s silence, in the way he could say a single word and quiet any noisy room, that calmed Grantaire’s own dark thoughts. It was that power that both drew Grantaire closer to the man, and terrified him. Does Enjolras know, that sometimes, in the still night, he dreams thoughts of revolution too? That a small, quiet part of him too long fors a better world?

No. And he will never know. Must never know. Because if he knew those thoughts, then he would too know that Grantaire is weak, unworthy, unable to face his fears. He knows he’s alone, yes, and knows that being alone is better than trying and failing to fix it.

 

It was the loudness that hurt him the most.

The raucous echoes inside a classroom, a roaring peal of laughter over a matter that certainly was not humorous, dirty songs shouted as they walked into the Musain. The moments that Enjolras knew he was failing, that the group assembled before him were nothing more than school boys, not revolutionaries. The noise distracts him, and sounds like a never-ending echo in his ears.  _Failure. Failure. Failure._  

That’s all he is. It doesn’t matter what he wants, though he wants a great deal. He’s been told all his life he’ll never amount to anything. His father used to say he was just a pretty face.

He wants to be much more than that. Enjolras  wants to succeed. He wants to change the world.

He knows that he probably won’t. That all his speeches fall on ears that only hear topics for jokes or gossip, that all his pamphlets he hands out end up underneath cold glasses full of beer.

He will never amount to anything, the noise tells him. He cannot raise his voice loud enough for anyone to hear.

Courfeyrac tells him to relax, to join in the fun. What the young man doesn’t know is that Enjolras has forgotten how to do so. Laughter, in these past few months, is a feeling he has given up on. It feels too fricolous, too wasteful to imagine enjoying life.

Because if he started to enjoy life, then he might be afraid to die.

A good revolutionary must stare death in the eye, and never cower from it. He must be brave, always, a leader among the people. Stern. Calm. Collected.

But deep in his heart, Enjolras doesn’t feel like he’s any of those things. He feels like a fraud, a silly boy, a nervous wreck. Sometimes, when he raises his voice to ask those around him to silence themselves, his voice cracks like a boy’s, despite being over twenty. His studies have become a disaster, his rooms resemble a war zone, and he can never sleep, because when he lays down, he feels guilty for having not done more that day.

So, no, he does not laugh, nor dance, nor join in the joyous mess around him. He practices and he preaches and he bottles up all his fear, hiding it under a stern face that he will never admit feels like a mask.

He knows he’s a coward, and afraid of failing. But to admit it is to fail, and so he will never speak of it.

 

 

The two of them exist like this, chaos and calm, pining and fear, until one day, when Enjolras loses his temper.  Grantaire is in the corner, ranting about stars and candles and all matters of nonsense. Enjolras storms over to him, puts his hand on his shoulder, and demands, “Are you ever quiet?”

The hand causes Grantaire to turn, and to utterly, and completely, become quiet.

Enjolras looks at Grantaire. Really, really looks at him for the first time. Noticing the bump of a once broken nose, the crooked smile of someone who’s forgotten what a real one looks like.

And Enjolras can’t remember the last time he smiled, either.

It’s not a handsome face, no, but it is not a mask either. That expression, as broken as it is, is genuine, real, alive. “Not as long as I live, no.” Grantaire replies.

“And if you were to die?”

“Than I shall sing my way through the afterlife, until the angels summon me up to their lofty heights, impressed by my vocals.”

Something tugs at Enjolras’s face. A crack in the mask. A smile. “So, all this… the shouting, the drinking, the partying, it’s not out of spite?”

“Spite?” Grantaire chuckles. “No. Say rather, fear.”

He keeps talking, because of course he does, but it’s that word that Enjolras hears again and again in his head. Grantaire has no problem admitting to it. Words are easy for him.

And they are so difficult for Enjolras. Grantaire uses up more words in a single answer than he might in a whole day. He forces himself to ask, “fear of what?”

Grantaire wets his lips, but for the first time, it is he who is silent.

Oddly enough, he stays silent, every day.

The meetings pass with no laughter, no songs, until Enjolras begins to miss them. WIthout Grantaire’s noise, it is just his lecturing. Courfeyrac teases them with a hint he might be bringing a new friend soon, one that will be eager to learn more of the ABC’s politics, but until this mystery friend shows up, Enjolras is quite literally preaching to the choir.

“Grantaire!” he calls, then, suddenly, fixed with the strangest idea. He should have gone to bed earlier last night. Or at all. “Sing us a song.”

“What?”

“You have been so quiet, I think everyone has gone to sleep.”

The man tilts his head, and Enjolras fears that he’s gone too far.

There’s that word again. Fear.

But when Grantaire begins to sing, the fear slides away, melting like snow under the sunlight. It’s an old folk tune, nothing lewd, nothing crass. Enjolras finds himself following, a counterpoint melody. That’s what they are. Counterpoint. Bright and dark, noise and silence. And they cannot live without both.

Somehow, all the other Amis slink away, until it is only the two of them in the room. Singing. Neither too much noise, nor none at all. Just… peace. Harmony now,  voices blending.

More than voices too, as Grantaire opens his arms and Enjolras steps into them, letting himself be held for just one moment.

For just a little bit of eternity.

Finally, he whispers, “is there any way to have you only noisy at the right times?”

“Oh I can think of a few ways to shut me up,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras freezes. Blushes terribly.

Grantaire’s hand slides into his. “What I’d really like, is for you to make some noise.”

Enjolras knows he could laugh it off. It very well could be a dirty joke. But something in the way Grantaire’s hand feels in his own, warm, steady, real, suggests otherwise. “How?”

“Embrace your fear. Live your life.”

They’re simple words, but they resound within all the hollow spots inside him. “And you? Will you let me teach you peace?”

Grantaire smiles. His free hand, fingers stained with paint, brushes through Enjolras’s golden hair. “You already have. I’m just a terrible student.”

They kiss, and it is the loudest soft noise that has ever sounded within that room. Two hearts, both calling out, now beating in time with each other. _Together, together, together._


End file.
